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Half-And-Halfs, Hermaphrodites, Half-Man Half-Woman

"No category of Freaks is... regarded with such ferocious ambivalence as the Hermaphrodites, for none creates in us a greater tension between physical repulsion and spiritual attraction." -- Leslie Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, 1978.

"Half-Man, Half-Women” acts, known in the business as Half-and-Halfs, were popular (and lucrative) from Barnum’s time until the 1960’s. These performers were sometimes billed as Sexual Enigmas, as Hermaphrodites, and/or Morphodites. They were more often than not shown in the blow-off, as the extra ding the mark was asked to pay was easier got when the hook was more severe.

In reality these performers were the sideshow's best actors. These men and women played a role that blurred the lines between reality and fantasy, confused the marks, and made the mysteries of sex seem alternatively grand, garish, strange, and frightening. They exploited confusion and titilation among a less educated audience in a simpler time, often appealing to hidden and unawakened sexual desires of a more inhibited public.

The Half-and-Half limned the edges of hetero and homo, cisgendered and other gendered, in a time when the attributes of sex appeared less fluid. Those who performed the role of the Half-And-Half in the sideshow were often literally cross-dressing— wearing men’s clothes on one side of the body, and a women’s on the other. Sometimes, but not often, they were transgendered persons, or more frequently cisgendered men playing dress-up, or rarely, real hermaphrodites, though rarest, women transvestites performing as both a man and a woman. All of them were ahead of their time.

Whether fully out, or fully in, the Half-and-Half role they played in the sideshow was a partial truth, an exaggerated reflection. Yet behind the scenes, when the marks left the lots, protected within the insular world of the shows, many were able to live a relatively judgement free and open lifestyle that could not be found in the places they’d come from, or the the places they were going to when they left the business.

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